Memories flood in as Erin nears 30

Happy Friday! A favorite Erin story:

The three of us were headed to Fort Lauderdale for the weekend. Erin was very young, and the occasion was a very important statewide writer’s conference.

The Chronicle paid for me to attend and a hotel room for the Wrights. Erin and her mom entertained themselves while I received great writing tips from Florida’s best newspaper reporters.

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That following Monday, Publisher Gerry Mulligan walked up to me.

“How was the conference?” he asked.

“Great!” I exclaimed. “Erin took her first step!”

My little Erin, who spent her youth in Citrus County, turns 30 on Wednesday. I know, I know. Makes me feel ancient.

I took the drive Thursday to Naples for lunch hour with Erin. It’s been a while since I visited, and I spent a few moments just looking at her.

Despite being a faithful reader of the blog, Erin declined an updated selfie. I asked if I could write about her.

“What are you going to write?” 

Good question. So, for Erin’s final days in her 20s, two Erinisms:

— When Erin was about 3 or 4, I took her to a Spring Training game. Now. Backstory:

We had a politician who raised funds to run for a higher office, ditched that plan, ran instead for re-election, and used all that money to pay huge fees to a friend to “manage” the campaign.

Well, he ran into an issue or two, and voters showed him the door in rather embarrassing fashion. I called the campaign manager. I asked him if he thought he earned those high fees.

There was a pause on the phone. “Mike Wright,” he said, “I don’t think I want to talk to you again.” And he hung up.

That was that.

Fast forward a few years.

I got Erin to the game in Lakeland by around the fourth or fifth inning. If you’ve been to Spring Training, you know people leave early/come late. I snagged a parking spot in the front row, and the ticket person let us in free because Erin was so darn cute.

It’s packed. We really have no tickets, so I’m looking for a spot to land. We’re walking through the stands, and I hear this voice, “Mike Wright!”

I turned around and it was — you guessed it — the campaign manager. He was pleasant as could be. Said he was leaving and handed me two box seat tickets next to the dugout. Are you kidding me?

Later that day, a woman caught a foul ball and gave it to Erin, who tried to toss it back on the field until I convinced her the players had plenty and didn’t need hers.

And before we left, an usher handed us a free pizza.

“Daddy, that was fun! Let’s do it again,” Erin said as we headed to the car.

“It isn’t always like that,” I told her.

— I occasionally wrote about Erin in my Chronicle column, “Wright on Target.” Well, we had an editor who thought that was unprofessional. He flat-out told me to stop writing about Erin. I wasn’t happy, but what could I do?

The directive came on a Wednesday morning. That same day some of us, the editor included, had lunch at Cracker’s. While finishing our meal, a group of three or four women walked by when one said, “Are you Mike Wright?”

When I said I was, she immediately gushed:

“I love when you write about Erin!”

She waved over her friends.

“This is Erin’s Dad!”

Then THEY started to gush.

“How is Erin?”

“She’s adorable!”

“That hamster story was so funny!”

All the while, the editor sat right there. He never said a word.

And he never stopped me from writing about Erin.

— The little girl who pranced about Citrus County in her youth is now a wife and mother with a great job and promising career. I am so incredibly proud of her.

Erin turns 30 on Wednesday. Please join me in wishing my daughter a very happy birthday.

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